Drinks Links

Cold
Hard Football Facts isn't a drink link, but it's a lot of fun if you're a
football fan...an obsessed football fan. It's largely written by another beer writer, Kerry Byrne,
who is a damned good writer, funnier than hell, and obviously a
gifted football analyst. And I write the beer column for the site. So
go there, already.

There are beer sites that have hundreds of other beer site links,
every brewery they can find, every amateur beerlover site, everything
remotely beer-related. Hey, if that's what you like, go there. What
I've got here are some of the beer, whiskey, and booze-related sites I visit fairly often. They don't have
any common factor except that I like 'em; a couple of them aren't even
about drinks. They aren't all entertaining, or even all pro-booze. Take a
look.

If you have a nomination for the list, please
send it. I might put it on, I might not; but thanks for sending it.

First...

No
politics here, just patriotism: Team
Twin Towerswants rid
of the foo-foo schemes architects and bigmouths have advanced for
the site of the World Trade Center. Their plan? Rebuild the
Towers we had. They
make sense, too, it's not just emotion. I support it. Please take a
look, and sign their
petition to rebuild.

Finding Beer

Pubcrawler: I use
this site every time I go out on a trip. Still the best brewery and bar locator website for North America.
Period. It's because the folks who leave reviews here have broader
interests than just the beer. So if you're headed out on a trip, check here
first.

BeerMe.com
has damn near every brewery in the world. There are some errors, but not a
lot. I use this site to plan my books, to find numbers, etc. Odd
arrangement, in my opinion, but excellent info.

This guy...is a total genius. Jonathan
Surratt is using Google Maps to "beermap"
the United States. That is, put every good beer bar, good beer store,
brewpub, and microbrewery on an interactive online map. This
one thing might make me get a satphone modem for my laptop.

I've put it off long enough, but I can't ignore it anymore: BeerAdvocatehas a tremendous list of beer bars, breweries, BOPs, and liquor
stores and an active community of beer geeks who populate a
lively forum. I spend way too much time there.

Every Liquor and
Beer Store in the United States. Strangely, this Asian health food site has address listings of almost every wine, beer, and liquor store in the country, alphabetically listed under the area codes.
I have found this incredibly useful on occasion.

Like real ale? Find it with the help of
Alex "Gotham Imbiber" Hall's U.S.
Cask Ale Pages, a page of links to an all-U.S. list of cask ale
bars, NYC lists of cask bars and good bars, a cask explanation page,
and the Imbiber online. Plenty of beer info here!

Other Good Booze Sites

The heavily-updated Malt
Advocatemagazine
website
is looking great. This is a magazine I've edited for seven
years, originally a beer newsletter that has evolved into the world's
best whisky magazine. In my humble opinion, of course.

World of Beer:I should
have had this up from the beginning. World of Beer is Stephen
Beaumont's site, a Canadian beer writer who's got a number of
books out, gets published in all the best mags (including Malt Advocate),
and has a great grasp on the philosophy of tasting. He's also a
friend of mine, and his site inspired this one. Sorry this took so
long!

Liquid
Diet: This is my friend and fellow beer writer Jack Curtin's
site. Jack tries to be a curmudgeon, but he's too damned nice. He does say
what's on his mind about beer, though, and is well-wired into the Philly beer scene. Worth reading:
Jack's a funny guy. But don't believe all the stuff he says about me!

I love the bars of upstate Pennsylvania, so I should have put
this site up months ago: AmericanTom
is the spiritual descendant of Suds & Dregs, the immortal bar
chroniclers of Berks County. This site reviews bars -- not
nightclubs or restaurants, bars -- has lots of pictures of cute
barmaids, and notes which bars have good clams: I love it.

I just found out about
John White and his White Beer Travels site in the wake of
the hubbub over the "Say Anything" Buzz.
John's a Brit with great taste in beer and a very link-laden
website, but all good ones: Belgian, Franconian, various "good
beer" groups, most of them annotated (thanks!) and fun to
read.

Ardent Spirits: Gary and
Mardee Regan write for Malt Advocate, and a bunch of other
places. They know a lot about bourbon, but their true love is
cocktails, and Ardent Spirits is all about that. Gary made me completely
reconsider whiskey sours.

The Real Beer Site was one of the
first all-beer pro sites for enthusiasts. It wandered off track for a
while, in my opinion, but they're back, and much stronger in content.
Good forums, if BeerAdvocate and ratebeer don't do it for you.

Lucy Saunders is a good
writer and a great cook; she's also got a laugh that's almost as
loud as mine. She writes about beer and food, has for years, and she has a
site called BeerCook, with recipes,
articles, and links to other beer cooks' sites.

The Dan & John Beer
Site. That says it all. Well, not quite. Dan and John live in
Northeast Philly, they love good beer, and they put up a site
about it. They're at all the Philly beer events. They drink a beer, they
give it a 1-5 rating, they move on. No graphics, no Flash. That's all. I
like it.

A Good Beer Blog is
what Alan McLeod calls his blog. Now, I'm not nuts about blogging (or
at least, I wasn't then: I am now).
But Alan's, well, I first liked it because he liked my writing, but
now I just like it. One of the better amateur beer sites I've seen,
because Alan is a mature, normal guy. I think.

The Geeky Details

How
to Tweak a Geek: you'll speak like a geek after perusing Peter
Ensminger's "Beer Data" site, with its explanations of all of beer geekerie's hottest numbers:
specific gravity, real extract, and attenuation. Plus calorie counts for
many commercial beers. Numbers, numbers, numbers!

Speaking of history, Rich Wagner has a Pennsylvania
Brewery History site that's quite a tribute to the glory days. Rich
tramps the old sites, and managed to get PA to put up a historical marker
on the site of the country's first lager brewery.

Food Sites

The Book and The Cook is
Philly's annual food and drink celebration: food and booze writers from
all over (Michael Jackson, Dave Wondrich, Stephen Beaumont, me...and
some cooks, I think) come to Philly and play. It's superb, and with this
new website, there are really things to keep up on year-round.

We bought a share from the Honey
Brook Organic Farm this summer, and it's been great. We get
a box full of great fresh produce once a week -- the best lettuce we've
ever eaten, deliciously sweet and crisp watermelon, heirloom
tomatoesand potatoes -- and we can go pick-our-own as well. Not
near Honey Brook? You can find a Community Supported Agriculture
farm near you here.

Food's good, but the folks at eGullet
are nuts about it. And I mean that in the best way. Some of them like
beer, too, and there's a growing discussion forum on beer there.
You'll have to work your way down through "Beverages" and
the "Beer" to find it.

MrBreakfast.com
is stupid, incomplete, choked with ads, run by AOL...everything I hate in
a website (except for pointless animation and music) -- but I LIKE IT!
Great idea, if only someone other than idiots reviewed breakfast joints
here, because I love a good local breakfast joint when I'm on the road.

Beating The Drys

Know the Enemy: anti-alcohol folks at the federal Substance
Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration put these
statistics together. Like Disraeli said: there are lies, damned lies,
and statistics. (No, it wasn't Twain: he quoted Disraeli as saying it).

Beat the Enemy: most anti-alcohol "science" is pure
D crap.Get
the facts from Dr. David J. Hanson's excellent Alcohol:
Problems & Solutions
website: real information on "binge" drinking, why we should
lower the legal drinking age, where all the MADD money goes, the crapola
about alcohol advertising...all here.

The 21 Legal Drinking Age is a mistake. I say that here,
and now there's a real, live foundation that says so, too: Choose
Responsibility is doing serious research on lowering the
drinking age to 18 for solid safety and moderate drinking reasons. See
their blog, Rethinking
Drinking, too.

If David Hanson is the academic side of anti-anti-alcohol, getMADD
is the rolling boil side, the side that's sick of the manipulation
and unconstitutional edge of the anti-drinking hysteria prevalent in
the legislatures and judicial system today. Get rhetoric to meet the
freaks, get fired up, getMADD.

Everything Else

Some surprisingly great music: when I was at the last Friday
the Firkinteenth, I got pressured into buying a CD entitled "Cask
Conditioned."It was only ten bucks, the guy who made
it was selling it, and..."Cask Conditioned" at Friday the
Firkinteenth? Good karma: it's a nice set of guitar music inspired
by various cask conditioned British ales. Neat idea, good tunes.

Put
together hiking and New York
Breweries and you get the Views
and Brews hiking patch. Similar to the 46'er patch for climbing
all 46 High Peaks in the Adirondacks, this patch is for hikers who visit New
York brewpubs (and have at least one beer) and make nearby hikes (w/in
a 48 hour period). Do 25 visit/hikes, and you get the patch. Cool!

Kind
of connected to Views & Brews: I got a bike and started riding
recently as part of my lose-weight
campaign. I got a rack to carry it on the Passat from these folks,
ORS Direct. I got a
roof-rack and cargo bag for the car at the same time, and I'm letting you
know: my pleasure on the price was only surpassed by how
pleased I was by their service. These guys are top-notch: highly
recommended.

While we're talking about weight-loss: I did it with Weight
Watchers. If you stick to the program, it really works --
and nothing is "not allowed." It's not free, but I lost
50 lbs. before I even started exercising. And yes, it's mostly
geared towards women, but...if you're a guy, you will almost certainly
lose weight faster than women do on this plan. Bonus.

Nothing about beer here.
It's Dom Nozzi's Urban Design Principles, a site about how towns should be
laid out, neighborhoods set up, and so on. I just like this guy's ideas,
and they tie into ideas about how to restore community to our communities,
which would include better bars... (Hey, get this: Dom Nozzi saw
the "Death of the Corner Bar" rant and
e-mailed me! He likes the site, and...he's a homebrewer. Don'tcha
love it when things work out?)

This one's personal: The
Battle of Kontum website is about the fight to contain the
North Vietnamese Army attack on the regional capital of Kontum in
1972, towards the end of the Vietnam War. The man who wrote the
website, who fought in the battle, is a friend of mine, Lt. Col. Jack
Heslin, USA (ret.). If you don't know much about the actual
fighting in Vietnam, as opposed to the politics, it's as good a
place as any to start.

More to come...

Good
Commercial Sites

Brewers

Heavyweight
Brewing:8/21/06 -- Heavyweight Brewing has closed -- and
it's because they wanted to, not because they had to. Tom Baker will be opening
a brewpub soon. Meantime, I'm leaving this up.

The only
problem at Monk's is that it can be hard to get a table. Either wait, or
do what they advise: go to Nodding
Head, the nearby brewpub (there's a Monk's connection) for a small
and excellent selection of house beers and an eclectic menu.

Unibroue:
Great beers from this Quebecois brewery, truly outstanding beers, and
the label artwork is great, too.

Victory: Gotta love the 'Devil! The guys at Victory get my nod as some
of the most adept, dedicated, and helpful guys out there, and I admire
them tremendously for having tons of what I consider the most important
ingredient in brewing great beer: the will. Rock on.

Yuengling: I
have to have this one here, because I'm just so damned proud that
America's Oldest Brewery is a Pennsylvania brewery, and because I've been
drinking Yuengling since 1983: way before it was cool.

B.United imports
some truly wild and wonderful stuff, beers (Hitachino Nest, Schlenkerla,
J.W. Lees, La Chouffe, De Dolle, Hanssens, Koff, Schneider,
Einbeck, Sahti, Kindl Weisse) ciders (Domaine Etienne Dupont),
meads, and they're going to be bringing in my fave beer from my recent
Bavaria trip, Schlenkerla Helles Lager. Excellent beers, great
educational program for supporting the retailers who sell their beers (so
you get them in great shape), total passion, and innovative support for
their producers. Brilliant.

Merchant du Vin is the oldest importer of Belgian
beers to America: the elegantly rich Trappist ales from Rochefort,
Orval, Westmalle, and the lambics from Lindemans. They
also bring in the excellent Ayinger beers from Germany (see my trip
to the brewery here), the staunchly Yorkshire Sam
Smith beers and the organic beers from Pinkus Müller,
among others. Beer
educators for years: my hat's off to them.

One of my favorite brewpubs is DuClaw:great beer, good food, excellent service, and they really understand
how to make marketing appealing and effective. Great website, too.

I've
always liked the beers from Stoudt's
Brewing in Adamstown, PA, but lately they've gone off in a wild,
wonderful new direction. They are fully in-house with their production
now, the Pils has taken off (as I always felt it would someday),
and Stoudt's is rocking.Check
it out, and go visit.

Beer Stores, Beer Bars, etc.

The Beer Yard: it's
great because this is the best selection of retail beer in southeast PA,
it's great because it may be the best consumer source of take-home kegs in
the U.S., it's great because the owner, Matt Guyer, is passionate and
persistent about beer (I know serious NY beer geeks who travel six hours
one way every three months to buy beer here). It's also great because Matt
wants his website to be a valuable beer resource, not just an ad. Check
out the news here. (The website is written by Jack Curtin...but
it's pretty good anyway.)

Monk's Cafe
is the famous, literally world-renowned beer bar and restaurant
right here in my backyard: Philadelphia's finest offering to the thirsty
geek. Check this site for a truly up-to-date beerlist.

The Grey Lodge Pub:
One of my favorite bars anywhere, a kind of divey neighborhood bar that's
really friendly, comfortable as old shoes, and incredibly hip to good
beer. I mean, they make pizza in a toaster oven, they have a big cask ale
event every Friday the Thirteenth, the bar mascot is a big porcelain Lucky
Cat, and there's Hanssen's Kriek in the coldbox. I love this place.

Vecenie's
Distributing in Pittsburgh carries some pretty good stuff, and some
kind of surprising stuff: Eastern European beers like Baltika, Midwest
beers like Schell, and they carry Heavyweight, too. (And they were the
first people to respond to my website launch, so I gave them a link!)

I've been
doing some work for Origlio Beverage,
a very well-organized wholesaler here in Philadelphia, helping to get
their retail accounts fired up on "high-end" beer. It's uphill,
but it's starting to work, and these solidly mainstream accounts are the
ones that will make a real difference. Please check the website
occasionally, we're going to be doing some serious work on the content
side in the coming months; I'm also hoping they can expand their
high-end portfolio.

Distillers

Old Rip Van
Winkle:"Asleep for years in the wood." Julian Van
Winkle is one of my favorite people in the bourbon business, and he sure
bottles fine bourbon.

I'm
rather fond of the folks at Heaven
Hill. They make some of my favorite bourbons (including one of my
two 'table bourbons,' Elijah Craig 12 YO), they're family-owned and
independent, and they're smart folks. They also have a snazzy new visitor
center you should visit.

I'd be sorely remiss if I didn't mention my other
'table bourbon,' Jim
Beam Black, and the good folks who make it, Jim
Beam Brands. Fred Noe, Jerry Dalton, and the late Booker Noe have
always been a lot of help, and they make some awfully good whiskey,
including my pick for best whiskey last year, Baker's.

There are a growing number of microdistilleries in
America. One of the oldest and best is Clear
Creek, in Portland, OR. They have a line of eaux de vie
that is delicious, giving true meaning to the term "fruit
spirit." They are also messing with a malt whisky that is pretty
damned good. Take a look.

Beer Gear sites:

I'm a pro, so I use pro gear: the CA2000
AlcoMate Breathalyzer. The CA2000 was recommended to me by a
brewer in the course of a discussion on the inevitable drive home from
beer events. I drink responsibly, and drink a lot of water, but
it's still great to know when I'm safe -- and when I'm not. Listen:
don't make a habit of drinking and driving. But if you find
yourself in that situation, you'll feel more confident knowing just how
impaired you are. The CA2000 is an FDA-certified device, it can
be used over and over (powered by a 9 volt battery), it can be re-calibrated
for a small charge. (I'd show a picture, but they're copyrighted.) I
got mine at Advanced
Safety Devices, they cost about $75 and fit in a shirt pocket. Information
is power.

Scott
Balthaser has developed a fictitious monk, St. Obnoxious, who has a hell of a
thirst and a great sense of humor that makes for some very popular
T-shirts: fun site, too.

Bob
Sammons' Perfect Pint Shoppe has all the Guinness stuff you want and
can't get: posters, coasters, T-shirts, rugby shirts, hurling
shirts, pins, figurines, mirrors, patches... Cheaper than going to Ireland
to get it! Bob's going to open a store in northeast Philly soon,
till then you can only get it here.

Okay,
I've never bought from these guys -- Beer
Steins International -- and they tried to tell me what to put in
this link, and they don't have the glass beer boots that I really
want, but...damn, these are some impressive steins! They've got a
ton of them, too, unlike some other websites I've seen.